1 Acknowledge the Sovereignty of God, and not this only but the righteousness and faithfulness of the Sovereign God in the wrongs which are defamatory invectives of any man may offer you. If dirt be cast upon you, my first advice to you is what was once given to the prophet, Go down to the house of the potter.[1]

Adore the uncontrollable sovereignty of God which may make you a vessel of dishonor on a much worse account than that of being a little reproached by some in whose reproaches perhaps a man is really honored. With a most profound adoration of divine sovereignty, confess that if God single out you to be an object of numberless indignities and malignancies and satisfy himself in beholding what is done to you and by you and under them, there is nothing to be murmurred at[2].

Forever submit, yea, tho’ the dispensations of sovereignty be never so dark, mysterious, unsearchable[3]; and with all possible submission, say: Lord, I am willing to be whatever thou wilt have me to be; do what thou wilt with my name; if thou wilt have it vilified, let it be so. Only let thy Name be glorified.

I may tell you, this resignation will have admirable consequences. It had so when a servant of God oppressed with a world obloquies, thus resigned himself:

If the Lord say, I have no delight in thee, behold, there am I, let Him do to me as seemeth good unto Him!

[1] This is a reference to Jeremiah 18, where God instructs Jeremiah to go the house of the potter and see that a potter has complete sovereignty over the vessels he makes from clay:

Jeremiah 18:5–8 (ESV)

5 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. 7 If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, 8 and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it.

Thus, the instruction is to realize that in everything which happens God is ultimately sovereign. While it goes beyond the scope of this footnote, when this writer refers to sovereignty it does not mean fatalism. The way in which human freedom and divine sovereignty relate is a matter with significant discussion within Christian theology.

[2] God is sovereign. God is content with this attack upon you; therefore, there is no logical basis for human complaint.

The invisibility of God: Here is an iron-clad complaint of empiricism: only that which can be seen or determined therefrom is real. However Christians celebrate the invisibility of God:

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great Name we praise.

-Walter Smith

This of course is based in part on 1 Timothy 1:17 (ESV) “To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”

Where then is God hiding? It is an interesting thing to see that the God of Scripture claims to hide in plain sight. For example, at the end of Deuteronomy, Moses recounts all that has taken place for Israel. He tells the people that despite all that they have experienced, they still do not understand:

2 And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: “You have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, 3 the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders. 4 But to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear. 5 I have led you forty years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn off your feet. ….”

Deuteronomy 29:2–5 (ESV)

One wonders what story they told themselves which made sense of what they experienced. This run runs throughout Scripture. For example, the disciples had seen Jesus feed thousands with next to nothing, yet they did not see the miracle. For shortly thereafter, they see Jesus walk on the water and yet they cannot understand what is happening:

51 And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, 52 for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.

Mark 6:51–52 (ESV)

When look to other passages, we can see that God himself takes credit for his invisibility; even in the most obvious places. Thus, after Jesus rises from the dead, he walks along with some disciples who cannot recognize him:

15 While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. 16 But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

Luke 24:15–16 (ESV)

Jesus even goes so far as to state a purpose of his work is to purposefully blind some to the truth while proclaiming it:

10 And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. 11 And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, 12 so that
“they may indeed see but not perceive,
and may indeed hear but not understand,
lest they should turn and be forgiven.”

Mark 4:10–12 (ESV). That does not mean that we are not culpable; it is equally our own desire for blindness which keeps are our eyes closed:

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Romans 1:18 (ESV).

This blindness is taken away by the Gospel, alone. The light is bright enough to be seen; it is the willful and supernatural blindness which causes the sorrow:

3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

2 Corinthians 4:3–4 (ESV)

It is only the gracious act of God which reveals his truth:

25 At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; 26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.

Matthew 11:25-26 (ESV)

The invisibility of God does not lie in his absence but in the hardness of our heart, the malice of the Devil and the will of God.

In all things, then, God ordains conflict according to his sovereign, wise, and good purposes. This great truth must be central to our confession, our anchor in the midst of conflict, so that we are compelled and emboldened to be true ambassadors of reconciliation–to persevere as peacemakers. For conflict tries our true theology. It tests us and sifts our hearts, revealing what we truly believe and hold fast to. If we truly confess and believe that God ordains conflict, instead of cursing it, we can consecrate it. Instead of seeing conflict as an accident in a cosmos of chaos, we can accept it as a God-given assignment for our good and his ultimate glory. Most important, rather than perceiving conflict as an obstacle to our ministry, we can welcome it as an opportunity to minister.

Rob Lister begins his book “God is Impassible and Impassioned” with the observation that much contemporary discussion of the impassibility of God hinges upon a caricature of this classic Christian doctrine of God. Often the impassible God is described as some marble statute, an Aristotelian “unmoved mover”; perhaps Mr. Spock with extraordinary power — but not a God who loves.

The contemporary move to dispense with impassibility is driven by the assumption that only an impassioned God could love or show mercy or care for human suffering. Unless human suffering could force God to suffer, so the thinking goes, we would not be able to trust him or him in hope or know that he loves us.

Yet, to make this argument, the contemporary theologians must first slander the Christian tradition with an unfortunate slander. Lister rejects that slander as follows:

Rather, in the main, the classical tradition simply sought to preserve the notion that, as the self-determined sovereign, God is not subject to emotional affects that are involuntarily or unexpectedly wrung from him by his creatures. As we will see further on, this dimension of God’s self-determination was nearly always held in tandem with an affirmation of God’s meaningful emotional experience by the major proponents of the classical impassibility model.

J. I. Packer clearly expresses this classical sentiment about God when he asserts that impassibility is

“not impassivity, unconcern, and impersonal detachment in the face of creation; not insensitivity and indifference to the distresses of a fallen world; not inability or unwillingness to empathize with human pain and grief; but simply that God’s experiences do not come upon him as ours come upon us, for his are foreknown, willed and chosen by himself and are not involuntary surprises forced on him from outside, apart from his own decision, in the way that ours regularly are.”

Indeed, the doctrine merely holds that even God’s affections come “according to the purpose of his will” (Ephesians 1:6). The mercy and love of God does not hinge upon our affecting him, but on his determination to exercise mercy and love according to his own purpose for his own glory. God still exercises love and mercy — but only because he determines to do so.

Much discussion goes awry when we think that we have somehow affected God, that we cause God distress or cause God to be pleased. This does not mean that God is not pleased with stedfast love (Hosea 6:6) or that God does not hate evil (Psalm 5:5). Rather it means that God is not whipped around in passions as we may be.

This is a great anchor for our hope. We know that God can keep his promises, because God will not acted upon and thus fly into a rage and forget himself. The God of the universe is not some drunken godlet tumbling about in the clouds or chasing after human attention like Zeus.

“Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.” Psalm 115:3. Were God not impassible, we could not know the promise of this verse would be true. Some human provocation might force God’s hand; God would be restrained by his passions. If God were not impassible, God could not be sovereign. If God is not sovereign, God cannot guarantee his promises. If God may not keep his promise, then our hope must waver.

Yet, since God is impassible, we may safely be sure that his stedfast love endures forever (Psalm 107). Impassibility is an anchor for our hope.

The appearance of God is in effable and indescribable, and cannot be seen by eyes of flesh.

For in glory He is incomprehensible,
in greatness unfathomable,
in height inconceivable,
in power incomparable,
in wisdom unrivalled,
in goodness inimitable,
in kindness unutterable.

For if I say He is Light,
I name but His own work;
if I call Him Word,
I name but His sovereignty;
if I call Him Mind,
I speak but of His wisdom;
if I say He is Spirit,
I speak of His breath;
if I call Him Wisdom,
I speak of His offspring;
if I call Him Strength,
I speak of His sway;
if I call Him Power,
I am mentioning His activity;
if Providence,
I but mention His goodness;
if I call Him Kingdom,
I but mention His glory;
if I call Him Lord,
I mention His being judge;
if I call Him Judge,
I speak of Him as being just;
if I call Him Father,
I speak of all things as being from Him;
if I call Him Fire,
I but mention His anger.

You will say, then, to me, “Is God angry?”
Yes; He is angry with those who act wickedly,
but He is good, and kind, and merciful,
to those who love and fear Him;
for He is a chastener of the godly,
and father of the righteous;
but he is a judge and punisher of the impious.

To understand this question, we must first understand Rutherford’s doctrine of divine action, which would currently go by the title “compatibilism” or as Feinberg has it “soft determinism”. [1] In one sense all actions the result of God’s determination. However, in acting through human beings, God does not make a human being do something they do not desire to do. Rather, the determination of God and decision of the human being are compatible (please see the entire discussion by Feinberg to understand the nuances).

The concept is important to Rutherford’s argument, because he is considering whether a man becomes king because God has made him King or because the people have chosen the king. Romans 13:1 states that all authorities exist because God has appointed them. Thus, some would argue that I am king because God made me king: Therefore, everything I do is right (because God has willed it).

Rutherford nuances the argument by noting that with very possible exceptions (such as David being anointed as king by Samuel), no King was chosen by immediate act of God (there is no prophetic announcement that Mr. X will be king, in most instances). He gives the example of a biblical prophet. Jeremiah is a prophet because God made him a prophet. The fact that no one wants him to be a prophet does not change anything. Yet even David at some point must reckon with the willingness of the people that he be King:

The prophets were immediately called of God to be prophets, whether the people consented that they should be prophets or not; therefore God immediately and only sent the prophets, not the people; but though God extraordinarily designed some men to be kings, and anointed them by his prophets, yet were they never actually installed kings till the people made them kings.

God has decided that David will be king. God gives a prophetic word that David will be king. God also works through the people of Israel to make David king. But unless we are going to reduce Providence to fate and human beings to robots, we must take seriously the human interaction.

If they mean by the people’s choosing nothing but the people’s approbative consent, posterior to God’s act of creating a king, let them show us an act of God making Kings, and establishing royal power in this family lather than m that family, which is prior to the people’s consent,—distinct from the people’s consent I believe there is none at all.

Why then kings at all? Rutherford explains that to defend ourselves from violence (the common defense), it may make sense to have a ruler who can wield an army. Thus, the people are choosing someone to protect them. Moreover, people choose the local magistrates who rule over them; how much different is it than choosing a king?

And how then a king?

If all men be born, as concerning civil power, alike,—for no man cometh out of the womb with a diadem on his head or a sceptre in his hand, and yet men united in a society may give crown and sceptre to this man and not to that man,—then this power was in this united society, but it was not in them formally, for they should then all have been one king, and so both above and superior, and below and inferior to themselves, which we cannot say; therefore this power must have been virtually in them, because neither man nor community of men can give that which they neither have formally nor virtually in them.

And so he concludes that is the choice of the people that results in the king (even though such choice accords with God’s decision):

I think royalists cannot deny but a people ruled by aristocratic magistrates may elect a king, and a king so elected is formally made a lawful king by the people’s election; for of six willing and gifted to reign, what maketh one a king and not the other five? Certainly by God’s disposing the people to choose this man, and not another man. It cannot be said but God giveth the kingly power immediately; and by him kings reign, that is true. The office is immediately from God, but the question now is, What is that which formally applieth the office and royal power to this person rather than to the other five as meet? Nothing can here be dreamed of but God’s inclining the hearts of the states to choose this man and not that man.

This argument then opens the further consideration (not here addressed by Rutherford): If the consent of the governed is what makes a king (and such consent comes from God); then the retraction of consent must also derive from God.

Rutherford then also turns God’s will in appointment of a king against a king. Since the office is a gift of God (in the ultimate sense), the king must acknowledge his rule as not originating in his own goodness and fitness but rather in God’s gift:

But there is no title on earth now to tie crowns to families, to persons, but only the suffrages of the people: for, 1st, Conquest without the consent of the people is but royal robbery, as we shall see. 2d, There is no prophetical and immediate calling to kingdoms now. 3d, The Lord’s giving of regal parts is somewhat; but I hope royalists will not deny but a child, young in years and judgment, may be a lawful king. 4th, Mr Maxwell’s appointing of the kingly office doth no more make one man a lawful king than another; for this were a wide consequence. God hath appointed that kings should be; therefore John à Stiles is a king; yea, therefore David is a king. It followeth not. Therefore it remaineth only that the suffrages of the people of God is that just title and divine calling that kings have now to their crowns. I presuppose they have gifts to govern from God.

[1] “Soft determinists agree that everything happens is causally determined, but they also believe that some actions are free….Compatibilists contend that there are free actions and those actions, though casually determined, are free because they are done in accord with the agent’s wishes” (Feinberg, No One Like Him, 635 & 637).

Question III: Whether Royal Power and Definite Forms of Government be From God?

Answer:

This question concerns whether the particular form of government be from God. Rutherford notes the argument of Bellarmine that God generally appointed the fact of some kind of government, but the precise form of that government be something wholly in human hands.

This issue ultimately touches upon the matter of divine sovereignty and the freedom of human will. Rutherford would hold a compatibilist position. Crudely stated, Human beings choose what they want, but they will choose exactly what God requires:

Proverbs 16:1 (ESV)

The plans of the heart belong to man,

but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.

Proverbs 21:1 (ESV)

The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord;

he turns it wherever he will.

Acts 2:23 (ESV)

23 this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

Rutherford first considers a number of scriptural passages which indicate God appoints rulers. He then summarizes and concludes:

So, if the king be a living law by office, and the law put in execution which God hath commanded, then, as the moral law is by divine institution, so must the officer of God be, who is custos et vindex legis divinæ, the keeper, preserver, and avenger of God’s law.

Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex, or the Law and the Prince (Edinburgh: R. Ogle, 1843), 4.

Rutherford then turns to an objection: If God appoints monarchs, then every other form of government must be “wrong.” Rutherford rejects that position. First, the actual forms of government are not more less acceptable from a Christian perspective: God does not mandate that a country have a monarchy rather than a republic.

Second, even a king is subject to law:

and wherever God appointed a king he never appointed him absolute, and a sole independent angel, but joined always with him judges, who were no less to judge according to the law of God (2 Chron. 19:6,) than the king, Deut. 17:15. And in a moral obligation of judging righteously, the conscience of the monarch and the conscience of the inferior judges are equally under immediate subjection to the King of kings;

Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex, or the Law and the Prince (Edinburgh: R. Ogle, 1843), 5. Thus, “All three forms [of government] are from God” (5).

How then does a country choose a government? Don’t they choose independently of God? No. The moral law of nature requires a government: without a government there will be anarchy and loss of life (consider how quickly anarchist movements develop some “council” to make decisions). Human beings simply will not long tolerate no government of any sort.

How then do they choose a particular form? Rutherford gives the analogy from one’s marital status:

so then, the aptitude and temper of every commonwealth to monarchy, rather than to democracy or aristocracy, is God’s warrant and nearest call to determine the wills and liberty of people to pitch upon a monarchy, hic et nunc, rather than any other form of government, though all the three be from God, even as single life and marriage are both the lawful ordinances of God, and the constitution and temper of the body is a calling to either of the two; nor are we to think that aristocracy and democracy are either unlawful ordinances, or men’s inventions, or that those societies which want monarchy do therefore live in sins (5)

It is in the nature of the particular country as which government it will choose – and God has sovereignty over the nature of the country, also